Project Overview

The 322km2 Tigray-Afar licence is located in the Tigray province of northern Ethiopia, approximately 45km north of the regional centre of Mekele, 65km north of Africa's largest wind energy project at Ashegoda and 580 km north of the capital Addis Ababa. Mekele has a population of 65,000 and strong communication links, being served by a daily flight to and from Addis Ababa, a main road which runs from Addis Ababa to Asmara in Eritrea and is only 50km from the planned railway connection to Djibouti. The licence targets the prospective Proterozoic volcanic and volcanoclastic terranes that form part of the Arabian Nubian Shield. The shield hosts several substantial deposits in the region including the Bisha and Asmara copper/gold deposits in Eritrea, approximately 250km north of the Tigray-Afar Project, as well as the Sukari gold mine in Egypt and the Jabal Sayid copper project in Saudi Arabia.

In September 2014 Altau Resources (a 100% owned subsidiary of Altus Strategies) announced that a Memorandum of Understanding ("MoA") had been signed with Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC"), whereby JOGMEC was granted the option to acquire an initial 51% interest in the project by funding US$2.5M in expenditures prior to 31 March 2016. With three phases of drilling completed, JOGMEC fulfilled this requirement (having funded in excess of US$3.0M) however, in November 2017, JOGMEC notified the company that the project did not fit its investment criteria and, as such, withdrew from the MoA. As a result, Altau Resources retained 100% ownership of and title to the project and data generated from the MoA, which includes the Agamat gold prospect that was not investigated as part of the MoA work programmes.

Manto style orebody

Agamat Au prospect

Asagara prospect

Exploration Programme

The project area was selected on the basis of the presence of a major regional shear zone, coincident with locations of anomalous copper occurrences defined by Ethiopian Geological Survey in the 1980s. The project hosts the 'Italian Pit', an 80m long and up to 15m wide historical open pit copper mine, believed to have been worked by the Italians during the 1930s.

Four distinct copper-silver prospects have been defined to date at the project with grades of up to 22 % Cu and 102 g/t Ag from surface sampling. Rock chip channel results have included 28m at 0.75% Cu, 31m at 0.50% Cu, 4m at 3.22% Cu & 6m at 1.46% Cu. Drilling at Tigray-Afar, comprising 7,890m over 49 holes, returned grades of up to 1.53% Cu over 15.5m and 1.22% Cu over 11.9m. At least two stacked shallow dipping manto-style reefs of mineralised metavolcanics, with a cumulative width of at least 40m have been discovered at the Slater prospect. Mineralisation is associated with intense silicification and epidotisation and is accompanied by strong foliation textures and brecciation, in common with typical manto-style ore bodies in South America. The Agamat Cu-Ag-Au prospect located in the north of the project area and hosts copper mineralisation coincident with axial planar shearing, along fold hinges and which appears to show a general association with specular haematite, pyrite and/or quartz veining proximal to the fold hinges. Surface grades of up to 8.7% Cu, 99 g/t Ag and 13.5 g/t Au have been returned. Diamond drilling at the prospect has returned a best intersect to date of 0.70% Cu over 28.15m (including 7m of internal waste).

Asagara Copper Prospect

Mapping and prospecting during the third quarter of 2017 has identified two areas of newly developed artisanal copper workings. Groups of up to 50 miners have been reportedly excavating copper oxide mineralisation. Secondary copper sulphide minerals have also been identified in hand specimen. Rock chip samples collected by the Company from the workings have returned grades up to 5.58% Cu.

Geological mapping at Asagara has identified semi-continuous oxide copper mineralisation over a strike length of 2.0km over widths of up to 20m and a parallel zone of 0.6km strike length which is up to 15m wide. The prospect remains open to the north and to the south. Scout channel sampling by the Company has returned grades including 8m @ 0.56% Cu, starting and ending in mineralisation and 5m @ 0.77% Cu. Channels were limited to areas of outcrop, no trenching was undertaken as part of this programme due to extensive soil cover. The next stage of work will be to extend the current channel samples through trenching to determine the true width of mineralisation.

Agamat Gold Prospect

Previous work at the Agamat prospect has identified a zone of shearing, from which rock chip samples have included grades of 13.5 g/t Au, 9.5 g/t Au and 7.7 g/t Au. The Agamat prospect is associated with a significant VTEM anomaly striking north-south for approximately 5km. To the south of the VTEM anomaly are gossanous outcrops within a tectonised zone up to 60m wide. Visible gold and intense carbonate-silica-pyrite (+/- gold) alteration have been observed within this zone. The next stage of work by the Company will be to extend the mapped shear zones, with the aim of undertaking a systematic channel sampling programme.